Odd thing this facebook lark.

The other day, a dark horse from my past Peter ‘Conservative Commentary‘ Cuthbertson contacted me on it, requesting me to be listed as a ‘friend’. I obligingly did so, including some basic data about how we know each other (dating history, that sort of thing), only to find he has now de-listed me.

What was all that about then, Cuthie? Think you can just love me and leave me, eh?

I feel so used…

Full marks to Danny Alexander for making a factual statement which, too often, people like to hide away from in politics these days:

“Nationalism is about building up barriers between people, liberalism is about breaking those barriers down.”

Apparently, Alex Salmond is now demanding an apology from Danny, and from Jamie Stone for saying the SNP are xenophobic.

Why should they? There are clear ideological differences between the SNP and the Lib Dems - Danny’s quote above sums it up perfectly.

The bottom line is, nationalism is an extremely ugly thing, whether it is Cornish Nationalists “confiscating” English Heritage signs or Scottish Nationalists chucking faeces through English people’s letterboxes. Alex Salmond may like to pretend that nationalism has an “acceptable” face, but it’s fundamental features are a belief that your ‘people’ are both superior to another group and permanent victims at the same time.

Salmond launched his 2005 General Election campaign by swinging a claymore around his head outside the statue of Mel Gibson William Wallace in Stirling. That single image is more significant than a thousand assurances that the SNP regards anyone who happens to live in Scotland as “Scottish”.

This non-story about Hazel Blears has been on the BBC website for over 36 hours now. Either she’s standing or she isn’t. Clearly some flunky got over-excited, blabbed all to the BBC and Blears had to march back down the hill at the last minute. All in all, it isn’t the best start to a campaign.

David Boyle has written an illuminating article in Lib Dem News about Black Hawk, Colorado where gambling has been legalised for more than a decade now, and advises people to visit their website as a taste of what might be to come for Manchester:

We might point out that if you visit Black Hawk, leave your children at home. Blackhawk is not a friendly place to people under the age of 21. If you want to take your children, or have no choice, we recommend Central City or Cripple Creek. Blackhawk can really party! But beware, they have a police force that strictly enforces Colorado DUI laws.

It sounds like a dreadful place and I fear he may have a point. But I have to admit, my main reason for writing this post was so I could write a post with that title, above.

At least I didn’t use “Black Hawk, Down”.

Sorry to keep going on about this, but it does really annoy me. Of all the things a Labour MP might rebel against over the last ten years, changing the method of voting in the Commons - ONCE - is a pretty pathetic one.

Where were you, Denis, during the Iraq debate, the tuition fee debate and internment without trial?

Grr…

I’m struggling to work out if this is satire.

Apparently Paul Flynn’s other interests include “slick politicians” so no doubt he will soon be writing about how David Cameron’s spliff-related revelations of the past few days demonstrate that he is the true keeper of the Bob Marley flame.

This whole Blog Wars thing is all rather silly, but possibly the silliest aspect of it is hearing people from all parts of the political spectrum defend Guido as being non-partisan. This argument appears to rest on the basis that, from time to time, he slags off Tories as well as people from other parties.

Well, on that basis, Tharg knows what that makes me - I slag off Lib Dems all the time. And for that matter, I don’t attend half as many Lib Dem social events as Guido attends Tory ones. Yet strangely I don’t hear anyone claiming that I’m anything other than partisan.

And while he seems to be very keen to nail the Smith Institute, he doesn’t seem to have the same passion for exposing, say, the Policy Exchange for publishing research on Muslim social attitudes despite a relatively explicitly political agenda, or for that matter any of the other thinktanks currently “helping” the Tories with their current policy reviews (I’m not having a go at thinktanks here per se, lest I be accused of hypocrisy, merely suggesting that the Smith Institute “scandal” requires a bit of contextualising).

Ah, you say, but Guido occasionally writes posts slagging off thinktanks. He has an amusing picture of a chimp in a hat that goes alongside them and everything. But bemoaning an organisation and going after it are two different things.

I don’t have a problem with Guido having a partisan agenda - why shouldn’t he? But I do think people are foolish to buy into his “I hate everyone equally myth.” He may not love the modern Conservative Party, but it’s clear he’d rather have them in power and is working on that basis. Let’s at least be clear about that.

He’s back. And he’s even more bonkers than before.

The arch eurosceptic who wants us out of the EU, nevertheless is now insisting that the Commission should prepare legislation to make it illegal to exclude women from mosques and prevent M&S from installing distorted mirrors.

Personally, I stood in front of the radio open mouthed this morning, listening to Kilroy berating a women who he had attempted to co-opt to his cause for not gratefully falling to his knees. I cannot recommend this clip highly enough.

I had assumed that Robert Kilroy-Silk was just going to fade from view after 2004. Clearly I was wrong. UKIP should never be allowed to stop apologising for getting the man elected in their name.

Denis MacShane’s article on the evils of the government’s proposals for Lords reform is, to be charitable, a little confused. Let’s get this straight:

So why, then, will I go into the opposition lobby next week? It is over the proposal to tear up more than seven centuries of history and require MPs to sit rather than stand to vote. The Government wants MPs to take a multiple-choice exam on its proposals to reform the House of Lords. Instead of MPs voting in lobbies for or against different proposals, scratch cards will be handed out, which we can take away to list in order of preference what the composition of the Lords might be.

Don’t you think it says a lot about the Labour Party that one of its most senior MPs regards the “innovation” of a ballot paper as tantamount to a “scratchcard”? Makes you think about how much they value your vote and indeed the whole democratic process, doesn’t it?

Also, how do you square his “deeply held” belief that such an innovation would “tear up more than seven centuries of history” with his claim that “All my political life, I have argued that a smaller, elected chamber is the only way forward.” So, changing the way the Commons votes ONCE is too great a step, but fundamentally altering the way the Lords is composited is fine?

He seems to have barely read the White Paper, claiming that it would lead to the British second chamber to “grow like topsy” when in fact it proposes cutting the size of the Lords. Perhaps not to the extent that he would like, but a cut (by one third no less) is still a cut.

(I could extend this point to Vernon Bogdanor’s piece on Lords reform in the Telegraph yesterday. Quoting approvingly from John Major is always a fraught with danger, and citing his statement “If the answer is more politicians, you are asking the wrong question,” when the White Paper proposes reducing them is particularly foolish).

A lot of politicians appear to be imagining up all sorts of “principled” reasons for throwing out the government’s proposals before even getting a chance to vote on them. The bottom line is, if you want a fully elected second chamber, the free vote next month is your best and last chance to do it for a generation. Moaning about scratchcards is pathetic beyond belief. It makes them sound like they have become so completely institutionalised in Parliament that if they were released into the real world, they’d quickly starve to death.

More here.

My first response when reading about Forward Wales’ plan to field both party and ‘independent’ candidates in the next Assembly elections was, “what took them so long?” The Electoral Commission appear to have now woken up to this, but really it is too late.

This is the real danger of the AMS system, not the “dual candidacy” bugbear which Labour have banned. Indeed, were it not for the fact that they would pay too high a political price for doing it, on paper it is Labour that would have the most to gain from playing this kind of game. That said, it has the most to gain from the status quo as well: if may struggle to get list candidates elected, but FPTP gives it such a disproportionate advantage in Wales, that hardly matters to them.

The only real solution is to have candidates elected under a single system. Hopefully this will be one more nail in the coffin of this system, but it won’t be surrendered without a fight, especially given that the Welsh Raj Peter Hain has already pledged to veto any attempt by the National Assembly to get its own house in order.